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Oct. 17th, 2007 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseThis is how Obsessed Artist logic works:
Last night, walking back to the university from dinner, I realised I felt like crap. Worse, my eyes were acting funny from so much time focused on something about 10 inches from my face -- so much so that my night vision was shaky, and I have good night vision. Also, I ached, I felt exhausted, and I was in fact running on too little sleep and too much caffeine... for ME. I therefore decided I would call in to work and change my shift to Friday (So long as I'm in twice a week, they're pretty flexible about which day, so I didn't lose time over this).
Which meant I stayed at the university an hour and a half longer than planned, because, hey, if I'm not worried about waking up in time for work, I may as well get a bit more accomplished.
In related news, the unicorn, which I was making at home, RAWKS. Colin took photos before he got sick again, which also means before the mane was finished (And a multitude of other teeny details probably visible only to me got tweaked), and I was hoping he'd be taking more photos before I carry it to the university to actually get fired and fall apart, preferably with the planned eyes in place. (Alas, his computer is off, so I can't access them over the network to show you all.) The mermaid, started at the university, shows good potential to Rawk. if she doesn't totally fall over because I'm using the clay mixed for wheel work not figure work, and very wet to boot. The multitude of cups in the first project are darn cool, but those two seem inspired. We'll see how many of the other figures I make.
________________________________
Bunch o' reviews:
Exordium series (Smith and Trowbridge):
On the one hand, I loved the main plotline, and the central cast of characters. I fell for everybody in the Telvarna's crew, original or final, except Marim, who started as a good idea and didn't get fleshed out. (and the Eya'a, who were intended to be nearly incomprehensible, and succeeded a little too well). I liked the main romances, made difficult by differences in station and cultural background. I liked the way trust and truth, and the blending of personal and political, were worked into it. Many individual scenes were breathtaking, or pageturning, or heartbreaking, and most of the dialogue in the emotional dramas was fabulous, if occasionally obscure. They had all the things you'd expect of Space Opera; gigantic empires, seedy undergrounds, huge space battles, interesting telepathic powers, larger than life romances... the works.
However, I could have dumped some of the subplots completely; as one example, I never once, for a moment, cared what happened to anyone on Satansclaw. Some of the upper class machinations went on too long, and while it was nice to see the press show up and take part, I thought they could have been seen less.
There were also numerous occasions along the way of somewhat sophomoric humour -- twice, I believe, major, and usually serious, characters get themselves out of bad situations with weird bodily functions. These bothered me in part because I'm not into extensive bodily fluids as a source of humour, but more because they often didn't match the tone of other scenes. (Tate Kaga actually worked as a character, and made, or was, the only fart joke I kind of liked.)
There were also a variety of kinky goings on, from a culture based around weird sexual practices (usually fine with me, and often intriguing), to bits I'd have to say with amusement pretty much qualify as Sex Toys in Space. Which is admittedly something you'd think should show up more often. But in this case, it bothered me, because the sexuality grew more crude and degraded pretty much precisely on class lines. The outsiders were the ones with the crude language and the sex toys. The high class were all about dignity, and their sexual goings on, when discussed, never seemed to have that feel of the weird or kinky or outre. This might ahve been less of an issue - after all, the seedy spaceports being in the border-lands is a staple of space opera -- had the villains' villainy not fallen on exactly the same scale, with the lower status villains being more crude in their cruelty, and the higher ones having strong ritual and cultural ties to how and why they did things.
Some characters also felt underused. As one example, Lokri seemed to vanish between the end of book two and the second half of book five. (To be precise, he was present, a subplot turned on him. But that's just it; he had gone from a decently realized character to a plot gamepiece, and didn't switch back for far too long.) The initial worst villain had by book five lost all his energy as a character and became a piece of cardboard in the background, which was much like being disposed of peremptorily before his final ending, which itself looked like disposing of him peremptorily.
All in all, I enjoyed the main story, but I'd be hesitant to shove these books on friends, as they do have visible flaws throughout.
The Fox (Sherwood Smith)
I wholly recommend, except for one argh. I remembered that this was meand to be one book with Inda, and just grew to immense proportions. I also remembered that this series was *originally* planned as a duology. I forgot that the two facts together mean it's actually three books total, and the third isn't out and now I have to wait and argh!
Like that. I'm thinking the whole thing is heading for a big heartbreaker of an ending, and I'm really flailing that it's not here yet and I don't get to read it until The King's Shield is out.
The book's pretty hefty, and it's the sequel to another hefty book, and you know what? NO need for cutting here, this time. A handful of scenes suffered very slightly from the need to bring one back up to speed on what happened a few hundred pages before, but since it was a while since I read book one, I was just as happy to have the clues as to who was who again, and what they'd done, or who they were attached to. The omniscient seemed to be smoother in this book than it was in the first. And the new plot threads worked; I found myself fascinated by Fox, though i could have used fewer uses of the word Sardonic, since it's his permanent state.
Okay, that's it. I'm giving up on trying to give this a nice coherent review. Because frankly, I was too engrossed reading, and all I really want to say is a good solid SQUEEE because I pretty much loved it.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
forodwaith, you were curious, and I can loan you these two, but then you'll be in the same boat of having to wait.
Jim Henson's Return to Labyrinth (Jake Forbes, Chris Lie)
Part of the difficulty of looking at this is that the source material as it is in my head isn't quite the source material as it is on film, and neither is the source material as it is in Jake Forbes' head. Labyrinth the movie, as it lives in my head, is a slightly clever bildungsroman disguised as a companion quest disguised as a visual phantasmagoria, although far from as mature as the use of two 3-pound words would suggest. Labyrinth the movie as it is on screen is visually splendid but full of awkward dialogue and shaky acting and odd plot holes. Most of the scenes and set pieces are the same, but I always rewatch it slightly braced, knowing that the real thing is the one in my head, and I'll be disappointed in several places, even as a few others surprise me for looking or feeling as good as they ought. (I still adore Didymus, and I still am tempted by the special editions out. And nobody - female - will be surprised that even in the more sublime version in my head, Bowie wears the same pants.) Clearly I care for the movie or I wouldn't be planning a novel that starts with a similar situation and a deliberate homage. Actually, i love the movie in my head, and I like the badly acted clunky real one, possibly beyond its deserving. What can i say? When I had to design a magazine in grade 8 graphics class, the central article was an homage/obituary to Jim Henson.
So part of me is doomed when someone opts to write a "thirteen years after" sequel in whatever format; doomed to buy, doomed to be disappointed, doomed not to give it a fair perspective. Doomed to grab and read the second one even as I wasn't sure how I felt about the first. Actually, Manga seemed like a good choice; Bowie's Goblin King practically looked like an anime character anyhow.
First, a question. I always saw the first scene as Sarah playacting a personal fantasy, rather the way of the kids in Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy, without the advantage of cousins in synch with her thinking. Forbes seems to assume she was reading off a playscript, or at least that she took acting. One of the other reviewers seems to think she was telling the story from her favourite book. Is it really that open to interpretation?
The manga opens with a quick retelling of the story of Labyrinth the movie; the prose of which is directly taken from Sarah's storybook recitation at the start, and the story as she tells it to Toby in his cradle just before he's stolen.
The current story opens with a teenage boy on stage, acting out a scene where he, as the prince and hero, is facing down the queen who stole his throne. If this isn't meant as foreshadowing, as Sarah's initial playacting is set-up for the actual climax, I'll buy a hat just so I can eat it. Things start to go badly; he wishes it were all over -- and promptly everything collapses into disaster.
This is, of course, Sarah's little brother, the object of the quest through the Labyrinth. Toby is in high school now. Odd things have been happening around him; whenever he wishes for a thing, and really wants it, the wish comes true, if not always - ever - in ways he himself finds desirable.
Then someone shows up, supposedly the new guidance counsellor, but rather too strange and suave. He knows all about these incidents, and promising Toby everything he's dreamed of. Toby reject this, knowing rather too much about the consequences in the real world; and promptly has the counsellor swear not to help him again. But not, as it happens, not to meddle.
Next thing Toby knows, he's crawling through an underground tunnel after a goblin, adn into, gee, ya think? the Labyrinth.
The writing is a bit shaky, but not bad; it's full of bad puns and some of the odd manga standard stupid bits, like jokes about food. I can't say the tone is wholly off, though I think there's more recollection of the Bog of Eternal Stench in Forbes' mind, and less of the sweeter scenes. The actual plotlines so far seem reasonable; by the end of book two, we have some idea what's going on in the background, though Toby is still in over his head, and still an immature brat.
The new characters are a mixed bag, both in how I feel about them as themselves, and how true they are to the feel of the Labyrinth. There's a punkish faery, Hana, who lost her wings. The faery acts as Toby's first introduction to the Labyrinth, and I kind of like her. Less so her steed, which appears to be a baby of Ludo's species, but has a penchant for rolling in smelly things. There's a goblin called Skub who appears to be the lowest of the lowest of the low, whom I dislike, but I realised that it's mostly because I don't like the way he's drawn, which doesn't seem to fit "Goblin" at all. (Also, he's thrown into some of the dumbest and least movie-like subplots). The villainess and her daughters so far interest me not at all (Although the daughter with the little cloud over her head gets at least one good line, the fat one who consumes every liquid in reach makes me very, very uneasy.)
Moppet is actively cool, as she seems to be a human girl trying to pass as a goblin, and right from the start raised some odd flags. At first I thought she was bound to be a romantic interest, but, well, that seemed far less likely even in the early parts of issue two, and by the end? Not so much.
The places that bother me, however, are places which feel like they contradict the source material. (Didymus living in the goblin castle and serving Jareth? The creatures of the Labyrinth, the Bog and the goblin castle all having a ball together?) Some of these seem like set-up for a later explanation, but some seem like they're exclusively based on either a different reading of the movie or completely missing a nuance.
At first, his version of Sarah seems to have entirely forgotten her comment in the very last minute of the movie, which I feel is the heart of the whole thing; that you can grow up and still need the crazy fantasy world you made. Although by the end of book two it starts to seem possible that Forbes didn't forget that, or set it aside after all, I'm not banking that way, and if he missed that, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to reading more. Also, the Labyrinth and Goblin city are suddenly one of a few magical kingdoms, in part so a villainess can be introduced. While the hints of what Jareth is really up to are interesting, and depend on this broader world, I'm not sure what I think of this.
* A confession: I didn't get the Bog until I rewatched it as an adult. No, really, I registered the noises, but as more like raspberries, and the visuals went right over my head.
Last night, walking back to the university from dinner, I realised I felt like crap. Worse, my eyes were acting funny from so much time focused on something about 10 inches from my face -- so much so that my night vision was shaky, and I have good night vision. Also, I ached, I felt exhausted, and I was in fact running on too little sleep and too much caffeine... for ME. I therefore decided I would call in to work and change my shift to Friday (So long as I'm in twice a week, they're pretty flexible about which day, so I didn't lose time over this).
Which meant I stayed at the university an hour and a half longer than planned, because, hey, if I'm not worried about waking up in time for work, I may as well get a bit more accomplished.
In related news, the unicorn, which I was making at home, RAWKS. Colin took photos before he got sick again, which also means before the mane was finished (And a multitude of other teeny details probably visible only to me got tweaked), and I was hoping he'd be taking more photos before I carry it to the university to actually get fired and fall apart, preferably with the planned eyes in place. (Alas, his computer is off, so I can't access them over the network to show you all.) The mermaid, started at the university, shows good potential to Rawk. if she doesn't totally fall over because I'm using the clay mixed for wheel work not figure work, and very wet to boot. The multitude of cups in the first project are darn cool, but those two seem inspired. We'll see how many of the other figures I make.
________________________________
Bunch o' reviews:
Exordium series (Smith and Trowbridge):
On the one hand, I loved the main plotline, and the central cast of characters. I fell for everybody in the Telvarna's crew, original or final, except Marim, who started as a good idea and didn't get fleshed out. (and the Eya'a, who were intended to be nearly incomprehensible, and succeeded a little too well). I liked the main romances, made difficult by differences in station and cultural background. I liked the way trust and truth, and the blending of personal and political, were worked into it. Many individual scenes were breathtaking, or pageturning, or heartbreaking, and most of the dialogue in the emotional dramas was fabulous, if occasionally obscure. They had all the things you'd expect of Space Opera; gigantic empires, seedy undergrounds, huge space battles, interesting telepathic powers, larger than life romances... the works.
However, I could have dumped some of the subplots completely; as one example, I never once, for a moment, cared what happened to anyone on Satansclaw. Some of the upper class machinations went on too long, and while it was nice to see the press show up and take part, I thought they could have been seen less.
There were also numerous occasions along the way of somewhat sophomoric humour -- twice, I believe, major, and usually serious, characters get themselves out of bad situations with weird bodily functions. These bothered me in part because I'm not into extensive bodily fluids as a source of humour, but more because they often didn't match the tone of other scenes. (Tate Kaga actually worked as a character, and made, or was, the only fart joke I kind of liked.)
There were also a variety of kinky goings on, from a culture based around weird sexual practices (usually fine with me, and often intriguing), to bits I'd have to say with amusement pretty much qualify as Sex Toys in Space. Which is admittedly something you'd think should show up more often. But in this case, it bothered me, because the sexuality grew more crude and degraded pretty much precisely on class lines. The outsiders were the ones with the crude language and the sex toys. The high class were all about dignity, and their sexual goings on, when discussed, never seemed to have that feel of the weird or kinky or outre. This might ahve been less of an issue - after all, the seedy spaceports being in the border-lands is a staple of space opera -- had the villains' villainy not fallen on exactly the same scale, with the lower status villains being more crude in their cruelty, and the higher ones having strong ritual and cultural ties to how and why they did things.
Some characters also felt underused. As one example, Lokri seemed to vanish between the end of book two and the second half of book five. (To be precise, he was present, a subplot turned on him. But that's just it; he had gone from a decently realized character to a plot gamepiece, and didn't switch back for far too long.) The initial worst villain had by book five lost all his energy as a character and became a piece of cardboard in the background, which was much like being disposed of peremptorily before his final ending, which itself looked like disposing of him peremptorily.
All in all, I enjoyed the main story, but I'd be hesitant to shove these books on friends, as they do have visible flaws throughout.
The Fox (Sherwood Smith)
I wholly recommend, except for one argh. I remembered that this was meand to be one book with Inda, and just grew to immense proportions. I also remembered that this series was *originally* planned as a duology. I forgot that the two facts together mean it's actually three books total, and the third isn't out and now I have to wait and argh!
Like that. I'm thinking the whole thing is heading for a big heartbreaker of an ending, and I'm really flailing that it's not here yet and I don't get to read it until The King's Shield is out.
The book's pretty hefty, and it's the sequel to another hefty book, and you know what? NO need for cutting here, this time. A handful of scenes suffered very slightly from the need to bring one back up to speed on what happened a few hundred pages before, but since it was a while since I read book one, I was just as happy to have the clues as to who was who again, and what they'd done, or who they were attached to. The omniscient seemed to be smoother in this book than it was in the first. And the new plot threads worked; I found myself fascinated by Fox, though i could have used fewer uses of the word Sardonic, since it's his permanent state.
Okay, that's it. I'm giving up on trying to give this a nice coherent review. Because frankly, I was too engrossed reading, and all I really want to say is a good solid SQUEEE because I pretty much loved it.
forodwaith, you were curious, and I can loan you these two, but then you'll be in the same boat of having to wait.Jim Henson's Return to Labyrinth (Jake Forbes, Chris Lie)
Part of the difficulty of looking at this is that the source material as it is in my head isn't quite the source material as it is on film, and neither is the source material as it is in Jake Forbes' head. Labyrinth the movie, as it lives in my head, is a slightly clever bildungsroman disguised as a companion quest disguised as a visual phantasmagoria, although far from as mature as the use of two 3-pound words would suggest. Labyrinth the movie as it is on screen is visually splendid but full of awkward dialogue and shaky acting and odd plot holes. Most of the scenes and set pieces are the same, but I always rewatch it slightly braced, knowing that the real thing is the one in my head, and I'll be disappointed in several places, even as a few others surprise me for looking or feeling as good as they ought. (I still adore Didymus, and I still am tempted by the special editions out. And nobody - female - will be surprised that even in the more sublime version in my head, Bowie wears the same pants.) Clearly I care for the movie or I wouldn't be planning a novel that starts with a similar situation and a deliberate homage. Actually, i love the movie in my head, and I like the badly acted clunky real one, possibly beyond its deserving. What can i say? When I had to design a magazine in grade 8 graphics class, the central article was an homage/obituary to Jim Henson.
So part of me is doomed when someone opts to write a "thirteen years after" sequel in whatever format; doomed to buy, doomed to be disappointed, doomed not to give it a fair perspective. Doomed to grab and read the second one even as I wasn't sure how I felt about the first. Actually, Manga seemed like a good choice; Bowie's Goblin King practically looked like an anime character anyhow.
First, a question. I always saw the first scene as Sarah playacting a personal fantasy, rather the way of the kids in Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy, without the advantage of cousins in synch with her thinking. Forbes seems to assume she was reading off a playscript, or at least that she took acting. One of the other reviewers seems to think she was telling the story from her favourite book. Is it really that open to interpretation?
The manga opens with a quick retelling of the story of Labyrinth the movie; the prose of which is directly taken from Sarah's storybook recitation at the start, and the story as she tells it to Toby in his cradle just before he's stolen.
The current story opens with a teenage boy on stage, acting out a scene where he, as the prince and hero, is facing down the queen who stole his throne. If this isn't meant as foreshadowing, as Sarah's initial playacting is set-up for the actual climax, I'll buy a hat just so I can eat it. Things start to go badly; he wishes it were all over -- and promptly everything collapses into disaster.
This is, of course, Sarah's little brother, the object of the quest through the Labyrinth. Toby is in high school now. Odd things have been happening around him; whenever he wishes for a thing, and really wants it, the wish comes true, if not always - ever - in ways he himself finds desirable.
Then someone shows up, supposedly the new guidance counsellor, but rather too strange and suave. He knows all about these incidents, and promising Toby everything he's dreamed of. Toby reject this, knowing rather too much about the consequences in the real world; and promptly has the counsellor swear not to help him again. But not, as it happens, not to meddle.
Next thing Toby knows, he's crawling through an underground tunnel after a goblin, adn into, gee, ya think? the Labyrinth.
The writing is a bit shaky, but not bad; it's full of bad puns and some of the odd manga standard stupid bits, like jokes about food. I can't say the tone is wholly off, though I think there's more recollection of the Bog of Eternal Stench in Forbes' mind, and less of the sweeter scenes. The actual plotlines so far seem reasonable; by the end of book two, we have some idea what's going on in the background, though Toby is still in over his head, and still an immature brat.
The new characters are a mixed bag, both in how I feel about them as themselves, and how true they are to the feel of the Labyrinth. There's a punkish faery, Hana, who lost her wings. The faery acts as Toby's first introduction to the Labyrinth, and I kind of like her. Less so her steed, which appears to be a baby of Ludo's species, but has a penchant for rolling in smelly things. There's a goblin called Skub who appears to be the lowest of the lowest of the low, whom I dislike, but I realised that it's mostly because I don't like the way he's drawn, which doesn't seem to fit "Goblin" at all. (Also, he's thrown into some of the dumbest and least movie-like subplots). The villainess and her daughters so far interest me not at all (Although the daughter with the little cloud over her head gets at least one good line, the fat one who consumes every liquid in reach makes me very, very uneasy.)
Moppet is actively cool, as she seems to be a human girl trying to pass as a goblin, and right from the start raised some odd flags. At first I thought she was bound to be a romantic interest, but, well, that seemed far less likely even in the early parts of issue two, and by the end? Not so much.
The places that bother me, however, are places which feel like they contradict the source material. (Didymus living in the goblin castle and serving Jareth? The creatures of the Labyrinth, the Bog and the goblin castle all having a ball together?) Some of these seem like set-up for a later explanation, but some seem like they're exclusively based on either a different reading of the movie or completely missing a nuance.
At first, his version of Sarah seems to have entirely forgotten her comment in the very last minute of the movie, which I feel is the heart of the whole thing; that you can grow up and still need the crazy fantasy world you made. Although by the end of book two it starts to seem possible that Forbes didn't forget that, or set it aside after all, I'm not banking that way, and if he missed that, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to reading more. Also, the Labyrinth and Goblin city are suddenly one of a few magical kingdoms, in part so a villainess can be introduced. While the hints of what Jareth is really up to are interesting, and depend on this broader world, I'm not sure what I think of this.
* A confession: I didn't get the Bog until I rewatched it as an adult. No, really, I registered the noises, but as more like raspberries, and the visuals went right over my head.
